Summary:

• Benson Oak Ventures is investing in Web3 start-ups based on a core thesis around Passionware. We invest early — backing strong, passionate Founding teams who have strong product capabilities and skills to scale a community from early adopters to mass market usage.
• We invest in products that will leverage the potential of Web3 and also make the products seamless to use and appealing to a broad mass market. As with Web2, we love great UI/UX - which we consider even more important in decentralized platforms.
• At first glance, Talis looks like a NFT marketplace - and a highly visually appealing one. Under the hood Talis is building the NFT-based platform that artists deserve. A simple way for real world and digital artists to mint their NFT’s and link into a network of print on demand providers bridging the digital and real world without any middlemen.
• With NFTs, we saw the advent of huge market opportunity open up for artists, freed from shackles of multiple middle men for distribution and sales leaving the artist with cents on the dollar and no real opportunity for livelihood from their passion.
• Opensea was the first marketplace to really take off and saw NFT artists, collectors and speculator generate sales volumes of $8M in February and almost $4B by the end of August. Opensea is the wild west of NFT marketplaces with no curation of the art, insane ethereum gas prices and a centralized take rate marketplace.
• We are big fans of Terra one of the fastest growing blockchains due to its UX simplicity, focus on widespread adoption, all underpinned by a code-based stable coin and high interest yield on UST. Talis is built on top of Terra, removing any crypto learning curve for its early users who can get paid in USD equivalent (UST) without needing exposure to any highly volatile assets.

Talis Protocol: From Monet to Money

Product

Eloi the founder of Talis Protocol and his team brings a combination of e-commerce experience, technical skills, risk management and marketing at Fortune 500 consumer facing brands. They have a common obsession to expose artists to the opportunities of Web 3 and are doing this by building the artist owned NFT marketplace built on top of Terra - and to become a DAO.

The team has a broad vision for Artists and NFTs moving them beyond speculative instruments into a real business by bridging the digital to the real world through a decentralized print on demand solution. This opens up benefits for multiple stakeholders as everyone gets to share in royalties created through art, its adoption and its further merchandising.

• Artists and Creators. Enabling artists to connect with print on demand (POD) services around the world so buyers can get their NFT's and ownership on canvas, t-shirt, book etc.. This leads to immense value for all other stakeholders in the POD ecosystem
• Printing Companies. Removing middleman and providing global marketplace for POD services with a focus on high quality ownership based art. This provides better margins by going direct to buyers and most importantly - empowers artists with real business opportunities, reducing overdependency on pure NFT sales.
• Consumers. They now have access to a massive collectibles market and also can themselves port this to the offline world and showcase their ownership in the physical world.
• Art investors. Over time art investors will see what catches on and be able to build affiliate/rev share businesses with said artists as well as stake early promising artists and subsidize distribution for rev share opportunities.

The Talis Protocol engenders business fundamentals within what is today a collectible / speculative asset. This also erects the foundations for artists to turn their NFT businesses into financial collaterals and business partnership opportunities leveraging Defi.

The team had a soft launch in November and transaction volumes have been doubling month on month with great feedback from artists and users alike. They are proving the fit for long tail artists and iterating and improving on product and seamlessness of experience. Behind the scenes, the team has pipeline of unique art collections involving high end galleries with exposure to non crypto-native collectors.